Several years ago we coined the term "communication
guerilla" to designate a number of political praxis
forms - praxis forms that traverse the old boundaries
between political action and the everyday world, subjective
anger and rational political action, art and politics,
desire and work, theory and practice. In other words,
the term does not denote an organization like Globalize
Resistance, nor a political network like Attac, nor any
of the more complex, rhizomatic and continuously newly
constituted formations of the global protest movement,
such as People's Global Action [www.agp.org]
or the European noborder network [www.noborder.org].
The imaginary brigades of communication guerillas are
not necessarily networked with one another. What joins
them is a specific style of political action drawing from
a watchful view of the paradoxes and absurdities of power,
turning these into the starting point for political interventions
by playing with representations and identities, with alienation
and over-identification.

As it emerged in the 90s, the concept "communication
guerilla" was, not least of all, a response to
the exhaustion of traditional leftist activism after
the fall of the Berlin wall. The search for new forms
of praxis led (at least in some points) to a new, transversal
praxis beyond the realm of the "old" activism
- even though the point of departure for this search
was the experience of a seminal defeat of the left.
Today, following the rise and possibly already the incipient
downfall of a new global movement, the situation is
a different one, and the question arises as to the extent
to which this concept from the 90s is still useful.
The new activism has become more global, more networked,
but most of all, it has developed a new dynamic beyond
political and national borders. At the same time, however,
this activism still evinces many features of the old
polit-activism, not only in the neo-communist party
version of the SWP (Socialist Workers Party) and Globalize
Resistance. Despite all the rhetoric, activism often
still has a stance that is strangely separated from
people's everyday life, even that of its own protagonists.
The future of this global activism will depend on whether
it succeeds in being capable of action at the local
level, the level of everyday life, while continuing
to develop its transversal, border-crossing character
at the same time. The most important border that has
to be crossed is the border that constitutes the activist
her or himself in a separation from the "rest"
of society. We think that the praxis of the communication
guerilla can contribute to this kind of border-crossing.
This is our motivation for discussing in the following
text experiences with this praxis along the lines of
flight that are inscribed in it, along the border-crossings,
through which it is constituted.

Art and Politics

A web site [www.gatt.org]
that turns the self-presentation of the WTO right side
up: an inattentive conference assistant enters the words
WTO into a search engine - and a representative of the
Yes Men can appear as a representative for the World
Trade Organization at a congress for international law
[www.theyesmen.org],
transforming the conference into a slapstick scenario.
We encounter the same Yes Men shortly after the protests
in Prague, costumed as "Captain Euro" at a
demo against repression and arrests in front of the
Czech consulate, but also at the Ars Electronica Festival
in Linz, at art events in Barcelona, Vienna or London
- is it all an artistic end in itself or political action?
The campaign against the German deportation airline
Lufthansa [www.deportation-alliance.com]
starts with a poster exhibition ("Deportation Class")
that attacks the airline's self-presentation and links
it with the theme of deportations. This exhibition tours
through German art institutions, while the corporation
simultaneously attacks the Internet version of the same
pictures with furious legal threats. This, too, is an
uninhibited way of dealing with the border between art
and politics. It is not the question of which of the
two fields a project should be attributed to that is
interesting, but rather: Does it work? How does one
manage to make a fool of a seemingly over-powerful institution
or person and possibly even partially force them to
take a defensive position?

Communication guerilla differs from traditional political
forms of action in that it consciously draws from the
density of meanings of images and narrations. We are
tired of private security services and the omnipresent
purchase obligation, the removal of park benches that
forces passers-by into cappuccino bars or to just move
on. We know about the privatization of inner cities,
the disappearance of public space. But how is it possible
to intervene against the apparent automatism of these
processes - with an information event? A demonstration?
A blockade of the pedestrian zone? Or how would it be,
if there were suddenly an obstacle, a break in the Saturday
business of the pedestrian zone - not a colorful street
theater or exhibition project providing information
about the limitations and constraints of privatized
urban space, but rather something else that makes it
possible to see and experience these constraints, a
test arrangement, in which the users of the shopping
street are assigned their actual roles, but in an exaggerated
form?

The images: a pedestrian zone -- lifestyle shops, cafes,
buying, street musicians and idlers, who are discreetly
expelled from the square, advertising stocks, black-clothed
security at the portals of noble shopping passages ...
construction sites .. red and white barriers in the
flow of the promenading crowd ... a large square area
in the middle of a city square is blocked by red and
white ribbons, flanked by security guards in black jeans
and white T-shirts. Friendly employees wearing the company
logo address passers-by, the same logo is repeated at
an information table. Information sheets with a questionnaire
about the use of the pedestrian zone are distributed:
How often do you come into the city? How much do you
expect to spend today? Which method of payment do you
prefer? The questionnaires are used to determine permission
to cross the area or not. The narration: "We are
conducting this survey for the company Bienle, which
is contemplating the purchase of the entire Castle Square.
We are using this test arrangement to determine the
user profile of the area to be purchased, in terms of
profitability." [1]
What is important is that the picture is right. The
barricade is executed precisely, the body language of
the security guards radiates uncompromisingness, the
company employees operate smoothly and in a friendly
manner, but firmly; the corporate identity is thoroughly
and professionally styled, all the way from the company
logo to the outfit for the "staff". The activists
adapt the language of power, the plausible over-identification
is implemented through precise and reflected observation,
an eye for aesthetic details and a professional way
of dealing with materials.

This action was carried out by the politically active
artist group 01, but it was not identified as an art
action -- except to a few irritated members of the police
force, who had obviously not been informed by the "Bienzle
Company" ahead of time. The art label was thus
employed here only instrumentally as camouflage and
protective shield. For the passers-by, the action was
an irritating reality resulting in a subjective experience
of the fact of the privatization process in their city,
forcing them to take a position more than an information
or protest event would have done. It is also imaginable
that a project like this could be conducted in the framework
of an art festival -- there, however, the predominant
framework of interpretation for outside observers would
not have been "privatization" or "intervention
in the freedom of movement", but rather "art":
the same project, conducted within the boundaries of
an art space, produces tame artistic social criticism,
not communication guerilla. It is also imaginable that
a project like this could be exhibited in a museum --
the art business' current greed for contact with "authentic"
actors makes it possible. [2]
The Yes Men subsequently exhibited their appearance
as "Captain Euro" as a video installation
at worldinformation.org in Vienna [www.theyesmen.org].
At the same event, a technical device for checking irises
regulated the turnstile at the entrance. Here criticism
of the surveillance possibilities of the control society
take the form of technical playfulness in keeping with
the site of the presentation, the Technical Museum.
The potential of an action depends on the context, this
determines which codes the audience uses to read it.

Communication guerilla pursues a political concern.
It attempts to criticize the rules of normality by creating
irritations and ambiguities, thus enabling new ways
of reading familiar images and signs. The criticism
of naturalized power structures first requires making
these visible -- and they become visible where the smooth
functioning of the sign systems and interpretation mechanisms
starts to get stuck. This is hardly possible, however,
within the framework of art operations: the general
interpretation framework of "art" has the
effect of a kind of lubrication that makes it possible
for the viewer to easily swallow even the crudest provocation.
Radically slandering the established art scene, for
example, has long since been legitimized and thus defused
as a modus of the artistic avant-garde. Mixing up images
and signs by employing artistic techniques first becomes
exciting, when it leaves the integrating framework of
art behind.

"Is it not better to distort the signs than to
destroy them?" Roland Barthes once asked. The militant
leftist scene works hard at signs, too, their actions
are also symbolic -- yet here it is a matter of the
gesture of a military attack, of the destruction of
signs: paving stones into the windows of banks, the
obligatory trashing of a McDonalds branch, the battle
with robo-cops. The significance of this praxis of signs
with its staging of battle, revolts, tumults, should
not be underestimated. It is not without reason that
the Seattle riot functions as a sign, simultaneously
symbolizing and catalyzing the emergence of a new global
movement. The media treatment of this riot catapulted
the image of a militant resistance against the abstract
lack of alternatives of the capitalist economy into
the eye of the public. This image -- a war machine opposing
the abstract war machine of global capital -- developed
a huge mobilizing impact. At the same time, though,
militant resistance is always already integrated in
the mythology of parliamentary western democracy. In
the bourgeois media, the images dwindle into an illustration
of basic democratic principles: the ones to "blame"
for the street battles are a few wicked hooligans, who
functionalize the peaceful, colorful protest for their
own purposes. The "Black Block" does not uphold
the basic rules of non-violent protest, the recognition
of private property, the democratic game rules, and
must therefore be restrained with a massive police presence.
This figure of argumentation legitimizes not only the
violent appearance of state power, but also the right
of the globalization managers to continue to make their
decisions without public scrutiny.

However, the example of global protests can also be
used to show the effectiveness of the tactical distortion
of signs. At the protests against the World Bank meeting
in Prague in September 2000, the hip-swinging fairies
of the "Pink Block" not only managed to penetrate
into the symbolic "heart of the beast" (the
conference center of the World Bank meeting) -- which
neither the Tute Bianche in their cushioned overalls,
nor the black-clothed warriors of the Black Block had
succeeded in doing -- in addition, they also created
images that took the icon of the stone-throwing street
fighter against the police to the point of absurdity.
The warrior is a fighting woman in pink, she is a samba
dancer. A year later in Genoa, it was martians, UFOs,
the U-NO men and women soldiers of the PublixTheatreCaravan,
bikini girls, tire men, and others that distorted and
alienated the firmly fixed image of what a radical demonstration
is supposed to look like and how it is to act.

We have the feeling that the self-image of many militant
activists holds the danger of thinking of oneself as
separate from the rest of society: an activist subculture
is emerging with its own signs, its own values, and
its own patterns of legitimization. Resistance derives
its legitimacy from the authenticity of the use of one's
own body, the intensity of one's commitment. There are
lamentations about the isolation of the activist ghetto,
but at the same time, the "purity" of one's
own side is anxiously maintained, the rhetoric of confrontation
and the apocalyptic millenarianism of the activists
camp clearly separates it from mainstream society. This
separation also finds expression in the turbulent discussions
about contacts with the mainstream media, or in the
laboriousness of attempts to make contact with the neighborhood
of squatted houses. Despite occasional collaboration,
one is distrustful not only of the often narcissist
art world, but also of the "geeks", the cyberactivists
of the 90s, who flocked around events like the "next
5 minutes" congress in Amsterdam. A playful way
of dealing with signs, images and meanings, allowing
for hybridity and complexity, could contribute to partially
breaking down these demarcations. In an optimistic scenario,
the paradoxical meeting of two marginal social fields,
the art scene and polit-activism, could lead to the
emergence of a transversal art-polit-activism that overcomes
the boundaries and limitations of the respective scenes.
In October 2000, the Museum for Contemporary Art in
Barcelona held a series of curated workshops on the
theme of "Direct Action as one of the Fine Arts",
which evolved into a two-week meeting of activists [www.lasagencias.net].
Watched at first distrustfully by many "veteran"
activists, this event resulted in several political
projects that are still active today -- ninguna es ilegal
organized a border camp in 2001 at the southern tip
of Spain [www.sindominio.net/ninguna],
where thousands of African refugees arrive; indymedia
Barcelona [barcelona.indymedia.org]
was founded, and a coalition was formed that took part
with graphical and theatrical means in the protests
against the planned and then canceled World Bank meeting.
It is not a coincidence that communication guerilla
forms and techniques are often used with projects that
arise on occasions like this, forms that can stimulate
the pleasurable appropriation of artistic methods in
political work as well as the politically effective
employment of artistic potentials.

The environment of the global protests creates a social
space of its own in the form of an activist subculture
that transgresses national borders and is constituted
through manifold digital and physical networks. Sometimes
it seems that the networking itself and the mastery
of its tools are (still) the most important result of
this movement. The "art scene" provides a
room on the side in this social space, too. People meet
again -- not only at the next global protest, but also
at biennales and film festivals, at Documenta and Ars
Electronica. The interaction between art and political
scenes is still intermittent, communicated through a
few hyperactivists oscillating between art and politics.
A stronger interaction, which could become the starting
point for a broader transversal praxis, still needs
to be developed in concrete projects. The art scene's
current interest in "real social life" can
provide an impetus for this; the possibilities for succeeding
in the art market with resistive practices will also
play a role. Whether or not more will come of this remains
to be seen.

Activism, Everyday, Work

The media image of the activist, as well as his self-image
(for the person represented is usually a "he")
reduce the activist to the practice of action. It seems
as though these people do nothing else but occupy buildings
and organize demonstrations -- just as the artist is
also reduced to his projects and products in the public
view. Both, however, the artist and the activist, are
normally quite different. They work in agriculture or
in construction, as seasonal laborers, professional
charity donation collectors, in social work, or as part-time
employees in offices and call-centers; they teach at
language schools, adult education centers or universities.
Not least of all, they work in the field of new media
-- graphics and web design, network administrators,
computer specialists. They move in the working world
and simultaneously in an activist world that has its
own calendar, its own temporal and spatial order. This
is nothing new (the artist Franz Kafka was an administrative
employee, too); what is new though, in our opinion,
is the increasing integration of knowledge, lifestyle
and resources from both areas.

Just as it is still customary in some trades to take
tools during the lunch break in production for one's
own needs, office copy machines are used for the production
of flyers, information material is run through the company
postage machine. Various indymedia sites are largely
updated from places of work. On the other hand, many
media workers have their means of production, like computers
and video cameras, at home and can use them not only
for work, but also for political actions. Most of all,
though, the knowledge of the dominant discourse and
the predominant aesthetics constantly glides from one
area to another, can be used both for reproduction and
for criticism of existing power relationships.

Here the border-crossing goes in both directions: knowledge
about how to arrange texts that activist desktop-publishers
acquire through faking city information brochures or
official letterheads, is also useful for paid commissioned
work. Those who conversely reproduce the design and
ideological structures of the advertising world day
after day in their professional everyday life, can turn
the statement of advertising aesthetics upside-down
with just a little twist in a successful fake. The knowledge
of the "language of power" that is required
in professional life can be turned into resistance and
into subversion at any time. For communication guerillas,
this knowledge is central. One of the reasons why the
campaign against the deportation airline Lufthansa was
so successful was because the form of professional self-representation
was imitated so perfectly, while the meaning was turned
into its opposite through consistent exaggeration -
from Lufthansa's "we fly you there" to the
" we fly you out" of the Deportation Class.

For communication guerillas, it is not enough to know
the adversary -- the point is to master the forms and
signs that constitute "the language of power",
so to speak, ourselves. Communication guerill@s are
not spies or undercover agents in the working world
or the world of bourgeois consensus. In their life praxis,
they are often part of it, accepting roles as teachers
or colleagues, assuming functions in the capitalist
system. Yet it is precisely in this way that the oscillation
between radical criticism and camouflage becomes possible.
The recipient-journalists and their readers, potential
customers, everyone confronted with the advertising
material of the Deportation Class, are automatically
drawn into the contradictions of the capitalist system
and its western humanistic ideology: Is Deportation
Class really a cynical special offer from Lufthansa
for cheap seats on deportation flights? Or is it in
fact a particularly successful criticism of their deportation
practice? If the recipient decides on the first reading,
then they are confronted with the question of whether
this entails money-making at the expense of human dignity
or a legitimate marketing instrument. If they see through
the Deportation Class as a fake, then they cannot simply
dismiss it as an absurd slander -- it is too close to
the logic of the narration of the real Lufthansa ideology.
Regardless of which reading the recipient decides to
take, once the questions are posed, they stick to Lufthansa.
In this way, soiling an image breaks open what is widely
accepted and taken for granted in the capitalist system,
thus opening up an unmediated view of contradictions
between reality and representation.

The communication guerilla must have no fear of contact:
she has to dare to completely enter into the logic of
the detested dominant discourse, in order to turn it
around from the inside. And he has to trust in the effectiveness
of signs, not give in to the temptation to offer explanatory
information after all and thus dropping the mask. In
the course of the warring escapades of the German SPD
government, which was also supported by the Greens,
a poster turned up with the familiar dying soldier ("Why?")
[www.contrast.org/KG].
A slight distortion turned the "Why?" into
"Why not?". The logos of the SPD and the Greens
at the lower edge of the poster suggested that the poster
could be a publication from these parties -- although
the knowledgeable reader of signs understands very well
that political parties would never state the cynicism
of their politics that openly. Through the choice and
montage of the images, the poster clearly said: a cynical
"Why not?" is the attitude of these parties,
whether they admit it or not. With the addition of a
reproachful text, however, this intervention would have
left the space of the communication guerilla to become
propaganda/agitation. Its function would have been an
explanation with a grin factor, rather than irritation,
which forces reflection in the best case.

Globalization

There is no doubt about it: we are in the midst of
globalization, particularly as activists. The skills
that are practiced with the protests of the often so-called
anti-globalizers, are exactly the ones that every corporate
boss would wish for in his employees: capability for
teamwork in time-limited projects together with previously
unknown colleagues. Flexibility, cultural competence,
knowledge of foreign languages. Flat hierarchies, optimum
use of limited resources, ability to improvise. Mastery
of digital communication tools. Speed, full dedication.
Transversality here too -- the only question is, to
which end?

If it is true that we find ourselves in the midst of
a transition to the control society, then in the future
it could be even more important to hone our subversive
potential at the molecular level, to make it even more
targeted. In the emerging Empire, it will become even
less possible for us to direct our displeasure to individual
governments -- the game with images and representations
will become increasingly important in the networked
parts of the world, but without a decrease in the importance
of vehement actions in public space. It is a matter
of a political positioning that is not limited to theoretical
analysis in the terms of sociology and cultural theory,
but rather which also thinks in images and knows how
to use sign systems. Fury and irritation and the desire
to flip off power often lead more effectively than rational
reflection to recognizing the cracks and contradictions
in dominant discourse. Yet the communication guerilla
does not stand still in a self-referential temporary
confusion -- she continues to link it with argumentation
in bourgeois and own media, is connected to counter-public
spheres and refers to the themes and concerns of social
movements. In recent years, these movements have taken
over new technologies, from mobile phones to the use
(and faking) of increasingly interactive web sites and
videos, to live streaming.

Information technologies, useful instruments of the
control society, can be subversively turned around,
activists can make use of the skills they acquire in
their paid work for other purposes as well. Conversely,
the ways of working that they learn in the scene world
can also be useful to them in the neoliberal, flexibilized
everyday world of work. Time-limited, project-oriented
teamwork and spatial flexibility are only two examples
from many. Particularly in a societal formation, in
which signs, branding, images are increasingly important
not only in the business world, but also for governments
and multinational structures such as the WHO or the
G8, the communication guerilla can carry out efficient
attacks. The world of activism is not located outside
the globalization process, the transition from the age
of bourgeois democracies to something else, something
not yet defined. It is part of this -- and it is in
the intimate knowledge of the structures to be fought
that its potential to at least question their legitimacy
is found -- even if the next grand narrative is yet
to come.